"The Mist" (2007) - Movie Review

Good news of “The Mist” is that there are no zombies. But yes, there are creatures mainly aiming at human flesh for apparent reason of quenching their hunger I guess. This might be the only unexplained thing the film might have. Rest of it makes this one terrific thriller in the horror genre. As regular readers of this blog might know the dislike I have for horror genre due to the reason of unnecessary gruesome and gore. “1408” encouraged me to go for the film and mainly the team of the great movie, “The Shawshank Redemption” come together once again, Director Frank Darabont and famous writer Stephen King; it is two good reasons to watch “The Mist”. Sure it is not the category of “The Shawshank Redemption” but it resembles the human emotions, mentality and their act of unexpectedness when put in a situation threatening their life consisting of beliefs.

An artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) in a remote village decides to take his son Billy (Nathan Gamble) and a bitter neighbour Brent (Andre Braugher) to the super market after a storm hit them the day before. A mist soon covers and Dan (Jeffrey DeMunn) comes screaming into super market and says the person along with him was grabbed on by something ferocious. No one understands the phenomenon including us but we know it is the setting for the mysterious creatures to attack. Soon it happens and the first thing is that some people do not believe about the existence of the creatures as David says who personally witnesses one along with Ollie (Toby Jones) one of the store employee, Jim (William Sadler) and Myron (David Jensen). Basically more than creatures it slowly turns out to be people taking sides. The things falls apart when a over religious lady Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Ray Garden) whose non-stop ramblings attracts the people who are in a situation to believe in anything to be saved upon, even if it is the ridiculous preaching of Mrs. Carmody.

It is a film about human horror. The decisions and the resultants of those decisions cannot be weighed. It is a closed environment with the fear of death. It is the kind of death which scares every one. While the hopes of getting out appear bleak, things start to boil with the egos and stupidity swinging by in front of David. And David automatically sanctions to be a leader in to the group of people who think the same or rather think that David makes lot of sense gives his son to a new resident of the town, Amanda (Laurie Holden). The mob mentality is dealt with such a precision of human behaviour that many people might not notice how well it happens in a world of no creatures, pressure or insanity. This is pure manipulation of making others to follow the thing the only person thinks is right and even if it means of killing some one. In the name of god, anything can be done. It is easy to blame and act on some one who might not come into your face and even if that happens, the firm believer of that will not believe. That is the weirdness of the religion and the principles. It gives what you want on how you see it. Goodness or evil is in the definition of one’s own perspective and not in the religion or god.

What Stephen King and Frank Darabont give is an extra ordinary psychoanalysis of humans. The decision, the conflicting values and thoughts, the stubborn nature of even forgetting the grave circumstance of existence and mainly hope. The film gives creepy sense of feeling because of its hopelessness. Along the journey, we ourselves have restrained into going out. That’s not a choice but the people inside are even more dangerous than the creatures outside. It is certain death and it becomes a choice of how and when. But still people fight. Our fight of survival is unbelievable even when the future is a certain dark. And yes, some people decide to give up. I am talking about the majority of the people who gets bored of waiting and curiosity does the unthinkable even if it’s certainty of bringing doom.

What David or any one does in the film can be analyzed but the rightness and wrongful nature of it cannot be easily dissected to get a meaning or lesson out of it. There are lessons but some one who has been put through such a kind of treatment to extract sense out of it is tough. The end is a disturbing one. Quite fantastically it adheres to the nature of the film but after all my lines about judgments of right and wrong in a situation, this seems implausible for a character so strong and hopeful to behave in that manner.

In the process of watching the film, we shed the fear of death as certain character does by the encounters. I realized after couple of scary scenes that this is not the main plot. It is a background and the main horror is within the super market. Marcia Ray Garden performs Mrs. Carmody with the belief of the character over god and religion as with the person itself. She spits venom and pushes every wrong buttons in the audience. Her character is the one which questions the system of our society as such.

My judgments over horror genre got shattered. I am lining up my queue with some good ones of these kinds. This film is a roller coaster ride of thriller but an emotional analysis of who we really are. How we would behave in a pressurized closed situation threatening our existence? Is a belief a sin or a gift? Does values and principles aid or mislead us? Every one will get different answer and that’s exactly we all are. Conflicting individuals desperately trying to make ours the superior one. Some might not try and some might give their life. Earth is a big super market in “The Mist”. We are all there and we are doing the unthinkable.